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spk01: Hello, and thank you for standing by. My name is Regina, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Fibra Prologis fourth quarter earnings conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. We ask that you please limit your questions to one and return to the queue for any additional questions that you might have. If you'd like to withdraw your question, press star one again. I'd now like to turn the conference over to Alexandra Villalante, Head of Investor Relations. You may begin.
spk07: Thank you, Regina, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to our fourth quarter 2023 earnings conference call. Before we begin our prepared remarks, I would like to remind everyone that all the information presented in this conference call is proprietary and all rights are reserved. The information has been prepared only for information purposes and is not a solicitation of an offer to buy or sell any securities. Forward-looking statements during this call speak only of the date of this call. Our actual results, performance, prospects, or opportunities may differ materially from those expressed in or implied by the forward-looking statement. Additionally, during this call, we may refer to certain non-accounting financial measures. The company does not assume any obligations to update or revise any of these forward-looking statements in the future, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise, except as required by law. As is our practice, we have prepared supplementary materials that we may reference during the call as well. If you have not already done so, I will encourage you to visit our website at fibraprologist.com and download this material. Today, we will hear from Hector Ibarzabal, our CEO, who will discuss our strategy and market conditions, and from Jorge Giró, our Senior Vice President of Finance, who will review results and guidance. Also joining us today is Federico Cantú, our Head of Operations, and Alejandro Chavelas, our Head of Evaluations and Research. With that, it is my pleasure to hand the call over to Hector.
spk12: Thank you, Ale, and good morning, everyone. I want to start mentioning that this is my first call as CEO, and I'm very excited about the potential our team can accomplish in the near future. Luis was a great partner for more than 30 years. It has been an honor working with him. I want to welcome in this new cycle Federico Cantu, our Head of Operations, who has been with Prologis for 18 years and will be participating in our earnings call as our new FIBRA COO. 2023 has been a record year since our inception. We had good expectations at the beginning of the year, and our results ended up surpassing them. As we move into a new year, we continue to benefit from strong market conditions. a best-in-class portfolio, and a unique customer service. We had extraordinary figures, reaching almost 100% occupancy, something unseen for a portfolio of this size, and we accomplished a record 42% on rent change. Regarding capital markets, during the year, we also outperformed, as we reached a 50% total return, including dividends. We are now part of the MSTC, I-Mexico Index, and we significantly improved our certificate liquidity, having a current daily average trading value of $7 million. Last May, we successfully completed a follow-on of $400 million, which was priced at 59 pesos. and with our outstanding results combined with positive market conditions, allow us to deliver a 37% certificate price return since then. The market is recognizing our ability to raise rents, which brings as a consequence a growth in the value of our assets, a concept that we constantly refer to as value creation. Year over year, our same store asset values grew 21%. where most of this delta comes from rental increase. We acquired $330 million in new properties using the proceeds from the follow-on. All of these assets are core product and within our six markets. Our current GLA is almost 47 million square feet, which is an 8% growth compared to 2022 and almost 60% increase since IPO. We made substantial progress on our ESG goals. Prologis Energy Program commencement last October is a very important milestone on this regard. Jorge will provide more details on this. Now, I'd like to talk about market conditions. Net absorption in our six markets reached a new record of around 39 million square feet in the year. Interest in the sector has kept investors active in trying to supply new products. but challenges in infrastructure and entitlement are keeping a healthy balance between supply and demand. Year-end market vacancy ended at a low number of 1.4%. Our rent growth, a key driver of our value creation, continues to outperform. While market rents grew 22%, we were able to surpass a 40% rent change on rollover. This number is by far the highest in the sector. Let me provide a bit more color about our market. Energy and infrastructure availability for new development remains very limited. We believe this condition is preventing customers from having even a more accelerated expansion plan. Monterrey was again the most active market with 15 million square feet of net absorption and 14 million square feet in new completions. Near-shoring is driving most of this demand. Mexico City low vacancy is evidence of the complexity of finding suitable lands and the big challenge of endowment process. Consumption, including e-commerce, is still one of the main engines of demand. Several e-commerce players have aggressive plans for the following two years. Tijuana is the most constrained market on the supply side, mainly due to electricity availability. we expect the Iguana market trends to keep on growing during this year. Juarez and Reynosa remain with a healthy supply-demand balance with a strong pipeline of customers. Before I finish, I would like to mention the fact that 50% of world population will go through elections, including Mexico and the U.S., events that we do not control and that could bring some market volatility. To summarize, We expect favorable market conditions will remain, allowing more significant leasing power to continue increasing the value of our portfolio. As it relates to internal growth, we will continue to push rents up, which will generate higher cash flow. We believe that this year we will see significant increases on rent change on rollover. On the external front, we will remain active and opportunistic. Prologis currently has 3.2 million square feet under development that we will offer to FIBRA in the next 12 to 18 months. We will continue to evaluate, as well, third-party opportunities that are accretive and are aligned to our business model. In terms of our balance sheet, we will view it as a competitive advantage. It is the strongest in the sector and will allow us to play offense. We are looking forward to another great year in 2024. With that, I will pass the call over to Jorge.
spk09: Thank you, Hector, and good morning to everyone. I want to start welcoming Hector Ibarzaban as the new CEO of Ira Prologis, with whom I've worked for the last 30 years. I'm very excited of what we can do together in the years to come. With this, let me go through the results of the quarter and full year. FFO was $54 million for the quarter. a 12% increase, and $207 million for the full year, or 18.81 cents per certificate, a 3.6% growth. AFFO reached $42 million for the quarter, a 30% increase, and $169 million for the year, a 35% growth and above our expectations. These results were driven by, once again, record rent change on rollover, acquisitions, and a stronger peso compared to last year. Moving to operating metrics, leasing activity for the quarter was 1.8 million square feet, with an average occupancy of 99%, which is a testament of the strong conditions of the sector and the exceptional performance of our teams on the ground. Net effective range change and rollover reached a record high in the quarter and those months of 47.8 and 41.8, respectively. Our portfolio lead market is now 45%. What this means is that we could generate more than 70% of additional ASFO as leases roll over time, assuming current market levels. In terms of same store cash and gap NOI for the quarter, we had an increase of 8.8 and 8.4% respectively. Going to our balance sheet. We have kept a strong and flexible balance sheet. We have triple B plus rating, the highest in the sector, above Mexico sovereign. with a stable outlook. Let me go through some of the metrics. 100% of our debt is fixed with 4% weighted interest costs and no expirations until 26. On the liquidity front, we have about $200 million in cash, in balance, plus a committed and secure sustainable line of credit of $400 million, which is unused. Let me move to the guidance for the year. We keep on seeing high demand on the market. In this sense, we expect year-end occupancy to range between 97.5% and 98.5%. Following our strong leasing and record rate change, we expect same-store cash NOI growth to be between 6.5% and 8%. Annual capex as a percentage of NOI to range between 13 and 14 cents. GNA to range between 40 and 45 million dollars. On the capital deployment front, we expect to acquire between $100 and $300 million. Asset dispositions, between $0 and $50 million. Putting all this together, we are setting our full year SFO per certificate range between 18.5 and 19.5 U.S. dollar cents. Given our excellent results, we keep on adding value to our investors by increasing our guidance distribution 8.5% versus last year. reaching 14.1 U.S. dollar cents per certificate, making it the fourth consecutive annual increase. I would like to spend a minute on our 2023 dividend distribution, resulting from a financial gain mostly triggered by FX on our U.S. dollar debt. Given 2023 exceptional 13 percent PES appreciation versus the U.S. dollar, in line with local tax rules, Fibra Prologis will do an additional distribution which could reach $140 million above our 2023 nominal guidance. In this sense, Fibra Prologis has the capacity of distributing in-kind cash or both, any amount above our nominal guidance. Thanks to this distinctive feature, we can limit the use of funds or additional debt, as most of this difference will be covered in CBFIs. Therefore, protecting our balance sheet and liquidity. Turning to ESG. 2023 can be summarized as follows. In terms of our baseline GLA, we reached 92% of certified buildings. And 81% of LED lighting, our goal being 100% by 2025. Regarding Prologis Solar Initiative, we have initiated the installation of solar panels in 20 buildings equivalent to 10 megawatts. with our goal being 120 buildings or 17 megawatts by 2025. We have been recognized for third consecutive year as sector leader by Gresby. On the social side, through our Prologis Workforce Initiative in the Mexico City area, we now have 240 students graduated from our training programs. To finish, I would like to say that last year was a record year in many fronts. Our business is thriving. We keep on looking beyond real estate into our clients' needs and market evolution in order to add value to our operations. In summary, we have positioned Fibra Prologis in the path to drive continuous superior growth in 2024. This said, in line with Hector's remarks, we will be prudent. I want to thank our people on the ground who have executed our strategy flawlessly. adding value to our operations, and the continuous trust of our stakeholders. With that, I pass it back to the operator for Q&A.
spk01: At this time, if you would like to ask a question, press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. We ask that you please limit yourself to one question and return to the queue for any additional questions that you might have. Our first question will come from the line of Rodolfo Ramos with Bradesco BBI. Please go ahead.
spk05: Perfect. Thank you. Thank you for taking my question and congratulations on the results. I'll limit myself to one question here. Just, you know, given how tight some of these nearshoring markets have been and how competitive some of these transactions are getting, I mean, how feasible do you believe it is for you to be a consolidator in the Fibra sector, you know, especially especially considering the premium with your certificate trade versus perhaps the smaller, less liquid peers. Thank you.
spk12: Thank you, Rodolfo, for your question. This is Hector. I think that we have been able to build a very well-recognized platform. very good cost of capital. We have access to very good cost of debt. We have a great relation with our customers. And as you mentioned, in some cases in the markets, customers are the same and there could be some synergies. We permanently analyze all the different alternatives that Prologis has. And consolidation is one of the alternatives that actually we have been studying in the past and we will keep on studying. It's not easy to find the right target. It's not easy to put together all the pieces that are needed for these purposes. But what I can tell you is that that's part of what we constantly are analyzing.
spk01: Your next question comes from the line of Alan Macias with Bank of America. Please go ahead.
spk03: Hi. Good morning, and thank you for the call. Just a question on your acquisition guidance. It seems to me it is more conservative versus last year's guidance. And if you just can provide the drivers behind, I guess, a slower pace in acquisitions, what's behind that, just given that markets continue to have very strong demand. Thank you.
spk14: Thank you.
spk12: Thank you for your question, Alan. Current conditions where infrastructure constraint and complexity on the entitlement processes are making very slow the development cycles. In the past, development cycles used to take from 10 to 12 months, and now development cycles at least take 36 months. I think that's the main reason for not having more activity in the market. Having said this, Prologis, as a sponsor of the FIBRA, has realized this situation several years ago, and Prologis is anticipating on acquisition of land and doing everything that needs to be done in order to have infrastructure in place for the project. So the final consequence of this is that investments are taking more time. Fibra Prologis has the exclusivity to see everything that Prologis develops, and that provides a very interesting benchmark. So we permanently analyze and compare what is coming from the Prologis pipe and what is in third-party acquisitions. And everything that we do needs to be afraid of and in line with the strategy of the FIBRA. This is a long answer to tell you that, you know, it's becoming very hard to grow the business and very hard to do new development. We will not accelerate because we know that we need to do the right investments and not the past investments.
spk09: Alan, just to add to Hector's point, remember in 2023, We started the year with a guidance of $100 to $300 million, and then during the year, we adjusted up. So bear in mind, it's the beginning of the year. It's 17, 18 days after the beginning of the year. I mean, we put what we think could happen, but as things evolve, we will adjust if the case may be. Thank you.
spk01: Your next question comes from the line of Alexandra Rigon with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
spk00: Hi, good morning, Phoebe Apologist and thank you for taking my question and congratulations to all the new appointees. I guess my question is quite simple. Can you provide some color on what you're seeing with regards to tenant sentiment and let's say your dialogues with customers for new proposals and renewals? Has that changed since last quarter? You were talking about record absorption rates. So if you can just talk about kind of like the stock market and the sentiment there, that would be very helpful. Thank you.
spk10: Thank you, Alexandra, for your question. This is . We are seeing very good sentiment from customers and actually towards year end, our pipeline of prospects substantially increased across our six markets to over 20 million square feet. So in our conversations, we feel very optimistic. You know, we're seeing good activity on the nearshoring front as well as driven by domestic consumption. You know, we're pretty much sold out across our six markets, and we're confident that we'll be able to renew our customers. And, again, good sentiment across our six markets driven by these trends.
spk12: Pipeline as of today, at the beginning of the year, Alexandra, is – more robust is bigger than the pipeline that we had one year ago.
spk01: Your next question will come from the line of Francisco Chavez with BBVA. Please go ahead.
spk02: Hi. Thanks for the call and congrats on the strong results. My question is regarding the guidance for acquisitions. Can you give us more color on the timing of these acquisitions and also on the mix of those acquisitions by how much it will be from third parties and your sponsor. Thank you.
spk12: Thank you very much, Francisco, for your question. I think that you should expect most of the acquisitions to take part in the second half of the year. I would be expecting at least 75% of this number coming from Prologis pipeline. Regarding the way market behaves on 2022 and 2023, the most of these acquisitions are going to be related to manufacturing and are tied to this nearshoring phenomenon that everyone talks about.
spk01: Your next question comes from the line of Yarel Yody with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
spk11: Good morning, everyone. Thank you for taking my question. So it's a really quick one. I just wanted to focus on the guidance, particularly on the same-store cash NOI. So at the midpoint, you're about 7.25, which if you look at the same-store cash NOI growth for 2023, that's a bit of a downshift of nearly 300 basis points. So I was just wondering, as we... If you can help us think a little bit more about the framework around the same-store cash NOI guidance. Is it, you know, starting out conservative? Is it perhaps an impact of lower inflation? So how should we be thinking about this difference in the same-store cash NOI that actually happened in 23 versus what's forecast in 24? Thank you.
spk09: Thank you for your question. Remember, StorCash NOI is driven by two main items. One is rent change, and as you've seen, we have 45% market, as I've mentioned, which is important. And two, obviously, for the rest of the portfolio, the annual bumps. Now, this year, we have about 9% of the GLA will be rolling, versus last year, which was more in the mid-teens. So we have very low, from a relative perspective, rollover this year, which obviously you don't capture all that 45% or that mark-to-market in the same store. So that's the reason why the same store is where it is. We have a low roll this year versus the previous year. This comes from 2020 because there was a lot of negotiation of leases. But that's the reason why we're not being conservative. It is just what it is.
spk01: Your next question comes from the line of Adrian Huerta with JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
spk06: Hi, thank you. Congrats, Hector. My question has to do with the guidance on FFO per share. The low end seems to be at the same level as the 144Q on an annualized basis, the one just reported. why this limited growth? What other assumptions we should be taking into consideration to see this low level, the low end of the guidance for this year?
spk09: Thank you, Adrián. And honestly, I always get this question at the beginning of the year. Honestly, it has to do with the way that our petition is as Hector said, is the timing of the acquisitions, which are more back of the end of the year loaded. We have issued more certificates, as you know, from the follow on. We're distributing more certificates this year in the FX game. So everything is, I mean, on a certificate basis, everything is put into the mix. And the fact that we're acquiring at the end of the year gives you this, in your words, low FFO per share. But I think it's a sustainable growth. You still see growth. And at the end of the day, you can, it's reflected in the dividend per share, which is what, 8.5%. So it's the mix of things. And most of it has to do with the timing of acquisition, sorry.
spk01: Your next question comes from the line of Francisco Suarez with Scotiabank. Please go ahead.
spk13: Hey, good morning. Thanks for the call, Jens. A question on ESG. I noticed that you are offering and creating a new position on ESG at your company. Can you walk us a little bit towards the strategy behind that? Is going to capital allocation is going to be much more directed toward ESG futures? And on that note, what kind of returns an investor in Fibra Prologis can expect from the deployment on your solar panels in your rooftops?
spk09: Thank you. Let me start with the last piece of your question. On the solar panels, I mean, Fibra Prologis is going to get two things. One, on the economic side, we're going to get additional rent. This additional rent is not going to move the needle. So I wouldn't focus on that. It's additional rent. It's going to be direct to FFO, but it's not a significant amount. And the second thing is stickiness. We're giving to our clients clean energy, and there's going to be batteries also in some cases. So you have sustainable energy, and that creates a stickiness because some of our clients you can imagine require this type of energy to reach their ESG goals. Regarding the first part of your question, for all ESGs and strategic things, we need to put more resources into this. Previously, Montse was doing ESG and FP&A, and we need to have someone dedicated to ESG who knows more knowledgeable about the thing. knows the evolution because it's evolving every year, and it's part of our strategy. So, I mean, more to come, but putting new resources into the ESG should put FIBRA in a new position in this regard, also with regulatory needs or requirements. ESG is very important. We need someone who takes care of it for FIBRA. That's basically it.
spk12: At least I would say 50% of our customers, they have similar goals of next year than what we have. So that's why we are anticipating our customers will require these yes or yes. And they're extremely happy that they are starting to have the opportunity to have clean energy in their buildings. Some of them are ready to pay more for the electricity. As you know, FIBRA cannot have those revenues by regulation. What I think we're becoming is strategic partners of our customers about these important goals. And you can only expect FIBRA employees to keep on increasing our focus on this regard with this dedicated person that Jorge mentioned.
spk01: Your next question comes from the line of Andre Mancini with Citigroup. Please go ahead.
spk04: Hi, team. Congrats again to Hector, his first reporting quarter as CEO. Two questions. The first one, if you could explain why the disposition cap rate was on the higher side, right, 10.2% for the year, right, 2023, which is some 400 bps higher than the acquisition caps. So what you guys were selling, I would imagine maybe it's a non-core property that couldn't fetch the same caps as the high-quality stuff that you buy, or if it's that or something else. And then the second question, if you guys could provide an update on the next fiscal reform, I know it's not the short term, but I've been hearing clients asking and stuff in the newspapers about the next fiscal reform, and the likelihood there will be an increase in real estate taxes. in the next fiscal reform, like in the next administration? Thank you.
spk12: Thank you for your question, Andre. The answer to question number one, you already provided it. There were no core properties located in Matamoros and Hermosillo, all buildings. And actually, we are pleased that we were able, you know, to focus in a core market. They were outside of our markets, a completely different product. than the one that FIBRA is acquiring, and they were part of portfolio acquisitions made several years ago that they had that ingredient. They were not developed by us. Regarding the next fiscal reform, you know, property taxes actually are increasing, have been increasing every year, and we should expect this situation going forward to keep on growing. As a general comment, you know, these taxes, some people could feel that they are too expensive because there's a sentiment that you do not receive a lot of exchange. But compared to international standards, those property taxes are just catching up with the international level.
spk09: And Andre, let me, this is Jorge, let me just touch on this position, but you will see this going forward. I mean, imagine having three buildings in Matamoros and Hermosillo. It's not our core market. We don't have people on the ground. Moving people there or assets or resources to see how things are doing, it's expensive and it's just distracting, etc. So these were a sector set on the core and had around a 66% occupancy when we sold them. But before that, they were vacant. It took a long time to leave them. So sometimes, I mean, it doesn't move the needle, $25 million. Sometimes for strategic reasons and for good resource of capital, you sell them. And number-wise, it might not make sense. Business-wise, it makes all the sense in the world.
spk01: Your next question comes from the line of Anton McCotter with GBM. Please go ahead.
spk08: Hello, guys. Thank you for taking my question, and congrats for your results. Understanding your new acquisition pipeline, could a quicker downturn in rates drive you to be more aggressive in terms of deployment and maybe even acquisition cap rates? Or how could this shift your capital allocation strategy?
spk12: Thank you for your question. I think that this is a good opportunity to define a little bit what we think of as aggressivity. All of the acquisitions that we do, we try to make a very strict comparison to market conditions. For us, it's very hard to make an investment, buying an asset, making any type of investment above market conditions. Why to pay above market conditions if you could buy from Prolois at market conditions? So I think one of the strengths that Fibra Prolois has is that we have that visibility. We have the visibility of how much does it take, how much time does it take to develop. We have the best specifications in the market, and we can do a straightforward comparison between our assets and third-party acquisitions. So I wouldn't say that we are not aggressive. Actually, we participate in almost every process that takes place in the market, some of them with high interest on getting them, some other ones just to get market intelligence. But I don't think that we are lacking of aggressivity. I think that what we are doing is to try to do the right investments that eventually would create value to the company.
spk01: Again, for any questions, please press star 1, and your next question will come from the line of David Soto with Scotiabank. David, your line is open.
spk14: Hi. Thanks for taking the question. Just a quick question related to the last strategy. private developers taking more important on the last night strategy. So if you could please provide some color about the last project strategy and if we should expect any changes or alliances with logistic components in Mexico City.
spk12: Thank you for your question. I think that Last Mile and First Mile and Last Touch, as we call this program, is something that we have permanently studying. We have periodic conversations with our customers so we understand the needs that they have today, the future needs that they will be having. And today Mexico City has been capturing almost all of this activity. Vallejo has been the most active market in the pipeline, and these are investments in which federal prologies Those are straight from third parties without Prologis sponsor participating. I think that this year we will have at least three or four investments in this regard. All of them are going to be in Mexico City. Some of them are adding value because we are having the ability to buy properties adjacent to the current properties that we have, taking care of the requests from customers that they want to expand their operations. It's a business that will keep on increasing. The big e-commerce operator, each one of them, they have at least 30, between 30 and 40 facilities on this regard in Mexico City. So that gives you an idea of how important is these facilities to have access to better customer service to them. I think this program creates a stickiness, increases the trust with our customers and take us to where we want to be to become a strategic partner and not just transactional partners to our companies.
spk01: We have no further questions at this time. I'll turn the call back over to Hector, the CEO, for any closing remarks.
spk12: Thank you very much for your interest in FibroPrology. I think that we are delighted about the opportunity that the market is putting in front of us. We have all the conditions to keep on taking care of the different opportunities that we are having in nearshoring, in e-commerce, and income sanction. We're well prepared. We have a good balance. And I'm very optimistic about replying and replicating the good results of 2023 in this 2024. Hope to see you soon in the field. We have several conferences that we will be attending and hope to see you around. Thank you very much.
spk01: That does conclude today's conference call. We thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.
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